The Liberal Party of Quebec must find a way to move the Canadian federation and to formulate demands for Quebec with Ottawa, admitted Marc Tanguay.
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The interim leader of the PLQ made this admission Friday morning during the report of the parliamentary session of the Liberals, at the National Assembly.
“The Quebec Liberal Party must regain its ability to change Canada. The Liberal Party of Quebec must regain its ability to verbalize demands, to repeat them, and we have demands from the federal government,” he declared in response to a journalist who asked him why federalism must remain a important value for his party.
“This nationalism, within a Canadian federation which is called upon to evolve, I think that we must put it back forward,” he added.
Mr. Tanguay also recalled the legacy of former Liberal Premiers Jean Lesage and Robert Bourassa, who respectively nationalized hydroelectricity and made French the official language of Quebec.
“That’s the Liberal Party of Quebec. And that, for us, is our nationalism within Canada. Then Canada, it is called to evolve. Then for us, it’s our role to make it evolve then to make claims, requests. This is how we will be able to flourish, ”he said.
Insisting on the fact that the PLQ is the only truly federalist party, Marc Tanguay then criticized the approach of François Legault, according to him, ineffective. “It was a failure,” he said, speaking of federal health transfers. “We needed $6 billion. He came back with $1 billion.
New Federalism
A few days ago, the interim leader of the PLQ admitted that his party had “withdrawn a little from the constitutional debate” in recent years, to the point of no longer “being in demand” for fear of look naughty.
“Because if we are told no [par le fédéral], there is some chicanery. And I think that we will not have been able to evolve, to challenge the Canadian federation, ”he admitted at the microphone of Antoine Robitaille.
And when asked whether it would be appropriate to resume the fight for “renewed federalism”, Mr. Tanguay had simply answered: “yes”.
- Listen to the provincial and federal political column with Antoine Robitaille, host of the program Là-Haut sur la colline on QUB radio, among other things about Marc Tanguay, on the microphone of Benoit Dutrizac via QUB-radio :
Nationalism
During the general council of the PLQ at the end of May, the former president of the political commission, Jérôme Turcotte, pleaded for the party to have the courage to embody a more nationalist position, which did not arouse much enthusiasm.
On the contrary, another activist had outright suggested that Quebec should cede jurisdiction over health care to Ottawa.
Asked about this during his interview with QUB radio, Marc Tanguay assured that the party will never adopt such a position. “It’s caricatural, it’s anecdotal in my opinion. It won’t happen,” he said.